Tag: Inflation

Guest Post by Alex Berenson

Do we really have no hangover after the largest economic orgy in history – more than $10 trillion in fiscal and monetary stimulus in 2020 and 2021? The charts below suggest we’re still just drunk.

The inflation crisis is over.

Or is it?

This morning a reader sent along an interesting analysis of Thursday’s supposedly positive inflation report showing that prices in July rose 3.2 percent annually – and an even more interesting chart.

First a little background. That 3.2 percent number is “headline” or overall inflation. That headline annual figure peaked at 9.1 percent in June 2022 and has since fallen sharply. Thus the growing consensus that inflation is back in check.

Continue reading “How we stopped inflation without a recession (hint: by not stopping inflation)”

Via Birch Gold Group

From Peter Reagan at Birch Gold Group

If you can see beyond the mainstream media’s attempted glossing over of President Biden’s failures, then one topic stands out: Historic inflation since June 2021.

Of course, Biden doesn’t deserve all of the blame for inflation heating up. After all, the previous administration spent trillions, and Powell’s Fed practically ignored it until the “inflation train” had already left the station.

Now, it looks as though the price inflation that’s been siphoning our savings could be sticking around for quite a while longer. It could even become “business as usual.”

To illustrate this, we’ll start with some of Powell’s recent remarks on the future of rates for the next 6 months:

Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell on Wednesday affirmed that more interest rate increases are likely ahead as inflation is “well above” where it should be. “Inflation pressures continue to run high, and the process of getting inflation back down to 2% has a long way to go,” he said. Powell said the labor market is still tight though there are signs that conditions are loosening.

He noted that the number of open jobs still far exceeds the available labor pool.

Powell even included a deadline with his remarks: “Nearly all FOMC participants expect that it will be appropriate to raise interest rates somewhat further by the end of the year.”

Continue reading “Fed Stealthily Admits That Inflation Won – So What’s Next?”

Via Birch Gold Group

From Peter Reagan at Birch Gold Group

This week, Your News to Know rounds up the latest top stories involving gold and the overall economy. Stories include: John Williams on why inflation is worse than presented, Poland wants more gold, and Korea introduces gold ATMs.

John Williams: When inflation is really this bad, you need physical gold

John Williams is perhaps best known for his ShadowStats website, which provides inflation updates based on the measurements formerly used by the Federal Reserve. In the 1980s, the government decided that inflation was more of a marketing problem than a financial problem – and subsequently changed the way Consumer Price Index (CPI) numbers are captured and reported.

Continue reading “The Most Important Time to Own Gold”

Guest Post by Jeff Thomas

Traditionally, inflation has been defined as “an increase in the amount of currency in circulation.” Such an increase almost always causes an increase in the cost of goods and services, since, more plentiful currency units lowers their rarity, as compared to the supply of goods and services, which remains roughly the same. Therefore, it shouldn’t be surprising if a 20% increase in the amount of currency units translates into a 20% increase in the price of goods and services.

Unfortunately, in recent decades, even dictionaries have been offering a revised definition of inflation, as “an increase in the price of goods and services.” This is a pity, as it makes an already confusing subject even more difficult to understand.

Continue reading “Inflation: Your Role as a Milk Cow”

From Peter Reagan at Birch Gold Group

Despite the Fed’s best efforts thus far to raise rates and cool off inflation, I don’t expect relief any time soon.

With that in mind, let’s look into the past to see what  a longer period of inflation looks like.

The best place to start in the U.S. is to take a brief look at an extraordinarily long period of inflation that took place from the 1970s to the early 1980s. We don’t have to examine every detail, which would take hours, but this summary will suffice:

President Nixon abandoned the gold standard on August 15, 1971; this move devalued the dollar and drove up inflation. On the very same day, Nixon announced wage and price controls, which he hoped would tamp down the cost of living and create jobs. The latter move was done as the 1972 presidential election heated up and Nixon hoped to win over voters.

Instead, inflation crept up throughout 1973 and 1974, and by December 1974 it was in excess of 12%. Meanwhile, unemployment rose and exceeded 8% by the end of 1974.

In January 1980, inflation was just under 14%. The next month, inflation exceeded 14%, and it stayed there until July of 1980. Although it dropped by about one percent in July 1980, inflation stayed firmly in double-digit territory throughout 1980 and much of 1981.

Continue reading “Is the Golden Age Of 2% Inflation Over?”

From Brandon Smith

The inevitable outcome was clear for a decade at least, but in the run up to the Covid lockdowns there were many economists in the corporate media that outright denied the reality of an inflationary or stagflationary crisis. Joe Biden, Janet Yellen, Paul Krugman and a host of journalists claimed that concerns about inflation were “overblown” and that the Federal Reserve had everything under control.

Some might say they were ignorant.

Some might say they knew the danger and they were lying about it.

Continue reading “Brandon Smith: Inflation Smokescreens the Economic Dumpster Fire”

Via Birch Gold Group

From Peter Reagan at Birch Gold Group

Right now times are tough for those of us trying to scrape together a nest egg to support us during our golden years.

Usually, during times like these only the poor and lower-middle classes take the brunt of the economic impacts. But quite a bit has changed, especially since the first two quarters of negative GDP growth last year.

Now, even those fortunate enough to earn a six-figure income are struggling:

51% of high-income earners surveyed – those making over $100,000 – said they were living paycheck to paycheck in December. This was an increase of nine percentage points from the previous year.

The “New Reality Check” study also revealed another interesting tidbit.

Of the 73% of Americans living paycheck-to-paycheck who face difficulty just paying their bills “cite inflation as the reason they expect a worse financial situation in the next year.” Continue reading “American Families Are Getting Increasingly Desperate”

Guest Post by David Stockman

There is nothing more substantive than Bernanke’s original finger-in-the-air proposition that the Fed needed a 200 basis point cushion in the inflation rate in order to steer the economy clear of the dreaded 0.0% inflation line, the other side of which allegedly amounted to a black hole of deflationary demise.

But here’s the thing. There is not a shred of historical evidence that the US economy needs a 2.00% inflation guardrail to thrive, or any fixed rate of inflation at all.

For instance, even during the most difficult period of the 20th century—from 1921 to 1946 when the US economy experienced the Roaring Twenties boom, the Great Depression bust and the WWII rebound—there was abundant net economic growth over the period as a whole, accompanied by zero inflation.

Continue reading “David Stockman Reveals What Inflation Would Look Like in a True Free-Market Economy”

by Doug Casey

International Man: According to a recent Newsweek poll, 63% of Americans “strongly support” new government stimulus checks to combat inflation.

In other words, let’s fight the effects of money printing by doing even more money printing.

What’s your take on this?

Doug Casey: The nature of the US has been transformed. Americans have come to see the government as a cornucopia that can kiss everything and make it better—especially since the bailouts of the Biden Administration.

That attitude has become a cultural value and very hard to change. “Panem et circenses,” as the Romans said, has become necessary for both the government and its subjects. Remember that the prime directive of any entity—whether it’s an amoeba, an individual, a corporation, or a government—is to survive. The present government can’t survive without supporting more than half the population, which has become parasites. But the government itself is the biggest parasite of all. Can parasites live on each other forever? No. To use an overly fashionable word, it’s “unsustainable.” Continue reading “Doug Casey on How Inflation Destroys Civilization… and What You Can Do About It”